I just had a buddy of mine help me build a new pc, and I also purchased a copy of HL2. I play the game fine for about 20 minutes and suddenly my pc just restarts out of nowhere. I started playing it again and it ALWAYS crashes at the exact same spot. If you know anything about the game, it's after the part where the guards bust in the door on one of the civilians. You run up the stairs and a guy whispers and tells you to come to him. As soon as I enter the hallway my pc suddenly restarts. I don't know very much about hardware, but these are my specs.........

I got a Dell 4700
P4 3.0 Ghz With HT
512mb (256x2) Dual Channel DDR2 memory
GeForce 6600GT Video Card (its pretty darn good)
Do I need a new power supply? Mines 350w and I can still play Doom3 with amazing FPS and no problems...

I got the same thing in Far Cry could it be my memory? Iv seen alot of people with Dual Channel in these games..

Go to
System Properties,
Advanced,
Performance, Settings,
Advanced,
Go to the bottom where it says Virtual Memory & click "Change"
Now you need to change your paging file size.
Check off custom size & in the "Initial Size (MB)" put what ever Windows recommends. This value should be at the bottom where it says "Total paging file size for all drives"
And in the "Maximum size (MB)" put 4 x the size of your Ram. eg: 1GB Ram, you put 4000MB. 2GB Ram, you put 8000MB.

The reason you are getting this memory error is because Windows does a terrible job allocating your memory which in turn results in not enough memory.
For instance, if your Ram is not enough, then Windows uses a part of your HD as Ram. What I told you to do is to increase the amount of HD windows can use. This should solve your problems.

If you run into any stability problems (which I don't think you should) then just decrease the "Maximum size MB" by 3.5 x or 3 x.

This system plays the game great, then BOOM! screen goes black and restarts machine. At one point I actually saw a "could not read memory at blah blah blah" error, but most often it restarts my maching. Same issue with HL Source.

Here's what I've tried:
Since I have so much memory, i tried turning off my page file.
Uninstalled Divx pack.
I tried lowering all video settings in game.
Updated all drivers
successfully flashed motherboard.
Feel like I've done all the obvious stuff

Here's what I will try:
I am running Norton AV and will turn that off just to see what happens.
d3d or software instead of opengl

Here's what I won't try
I'm wary of overclocking, even a little -- this system is sort of a once-in-a-lifetime (well maybe not, but won't be able to justify replacing fried proc)

Right now I'm just playing as fast as I can to get saved further along before machine restarts!

I'll post anything that seems to work. Please reply if you've fixed this somehow other than overclocking.

---------------------------
HALF-LIFE 2: hl2.exe - Application Error
---------------------------
The instruction at "0x241f7c37" referenced memory at "0x0106f5c0". The memory could not be "read".

Click on OK to terminate the program
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

I was taking notes (after I clicked ok) then about 30 seconds later the screen went black and machine restarted like it was doing in the game. Something was spinning out of control.

Only seen this with HL2.... hmmm, puzzled -- tired -- want to play some more HL2. Also, can't seem to locate settings for d3d or software mode for 3d. I assumed it would be in an options menu but can't find it. Perhaps in a config file somewhere.

I am having the same problem. About every 15 minutes during half life 2 my computer completly crashes, my screen goes black, and I have to restart. It seems to be completely random and once happend when I was paused. I also get the sound stuttering glitch even after the patches I don't know if that is related. I will keep troubleshooting and post if I find anything.

I am not overclocked either. I did increase my page file to no avail. I have 2Gb RAM and a max 8000Mb pagefile, but same results -- black screen, restart machine. Temp is good on restart and system is otherwise perfectly stable.

The pagefile should be locked at 1.5* your total system memory. Any larger and it just accumulates unused hard drive space.

If you have at least a gig of ram, you can disable it or size it at only 500MB so that programs that need it still have it, but use it less.

Try getting the latest Forceware 70.xx's from http://www.guru3d.com. The Geforce 4 series only needs detonator drivers up to the 5x.xx series, because they don't have any additional features that the new drivers add.

Make sure you aren't running any background services or applications you don't need.

I hear different pagefile ideas from evert person who tells me to adjust them. I'm not sure who's right. Some say 1:1 with RAM, some 1.5:1 with RAM, some say 4:1 with RAM. Some say turn off completely if you have lots of RAM.

I've left at default, turned off completely, and set to 4x my RAM, all with the same result -- black screen during HL2 gameplay and system restart.

I am actually wondering if this isn't something built into the motherboard. Gigabyte has this "Thermal Shutdown Function" that detects when your cpu is too hot then instantly kills your system to avoid damage.

It is saying that the thermal paste supplied with the AMD CPU and whatever default heatsync melts at a temp higher than the shutdown temp of the motherboard, and until the paste melts it does't efficiently conduct heat -- you're locked in a hardware irony or catch-22. I am wondering what the magic # for Thermal Shutdown is and if there's any way to adjust it (I don't find it in the BIOS).

The bios for this motherboard has a setting for an alarm at certain temps, but the lowest temp is 60C. My CPU never gets that hot. The alarm never goes off, the temp after this HL2 crash/restart is always in the 40's.

For now I'm going to try and go to 1 stick of 1024Mb RAM and see if that helps. Next step is to pull heatsync off CPU and see if paste has melted -- possibly remove and apply thermal grease.

I found out by a reliable source that there is a Glitch in the original Half Life 2. Valve admit there is an error in the original design of the game, and will be releasing a patch to solve this problem. Basically, the computer crashes when playing between 2 to 20 minutes or more of Half Life 2.
But it don't happen to everybody.
It only happens to me when my PC is OC'ed @ 2.50 GHz or more. So I have it OC'ed to 2.40 GHz with no Half Life 2 prob's.